Fires are a major cause of death and injury in this country, and throughout the world. Fires can occur in single story buildings and can cause great destruction through the fire as well as via the smoke associated with such occurrence.
However, even more devastating than the damage and injury caused by fires in single story dwellings is the damage, injury and destruction associated with fires occurring in multiple story and high rise buildings. In such buildings, people are often trapped in upper stories, with the fire department unable to efficiently rescue them. Many times, these people are injured when they try to jump to safety. Since it is not advisable to use an elevator to in a fire emergency, many people, especially those who are handicapped and cannot walk, become trapped in the upper stories of high rise buildings.
The problem of rescue is compounded if the person being rescued is incapacitated or handicapped. This is often the case in a retirement home situation where the occupants are often handicapped and must be almost physically carried out of the building.
The problem of escaping a fire in a high rise building has engendered many different devices that are intended to lower a person to safety from a building. Examples of such devices are shown in patents such as U.S. Pat. Nos. 612,673, 1,241,701, 4,580,658 and 4,714,137 which disclose devices that are attached to the sill of a building window include a harness that encircles the user. The user controls the descent by manipulating a lever.
While somewhat effective, these devices have a shortcoming that prevents their use in many situations. The requirement that the user manipulate some form of hand control, such as a lever, or the like, to control the descent prevents these devices from being used in situations such as mentioned above wherein the user may be handicapped and not have full manipulative ability in their hands. This is especially true in the above-mentioned retirement home situation, but can also occur if the user is otherwise incapacitated, such as being unconscious or, is a young child, or the like.
Under such circumstances, the devices that require manipulation of a hand control to control descent will not be useful.
Accordingly, there is a need for an assembly for lowering a person to safety from a building which can be operated without the use of the user's hands and thus can be operated by someone having some impairment of the manipulative ability of their hands or fingers, and which can be operated without requiring the user to manipulate their fingers at all.